Wonders of a Godless World by Andrew McGahan Page B

long ago, a mountain had fallen and buried a village? How could she find out? It was the sort of knowledge, she guessed, that might be located in books but that was no use to her. The old doctor might also know, but without speech, how could she even make him understand the question?
    There was no way. She was alone with this. If she wanted surety, she would have to find it on her own, her only resources her eyes and ears and the immediate world around her. So, of all the things the foreigner had shown her, was there anything nearby that she could check in person? Something she had not already known, and could not have known, until he had revealed it to her?
    She was curled on her bed, staring across the room to the window. Through the glass the upper reaches of the volcano were visible in the dawn, its slopes still mottled with ash, but her eyes were far away, unseeing.
    Proof. It was a matter of finding proof .
    And then suddenly she did see.
    She leapt from the bed, went to the window. The mountain! She remembered now. On the day that she had flown with the foreigner, they had soared across the peak, and there, hidden in a crack at the summit, invisible from anywhere else, she had seen a strange little tree. So all she had to do, to prove to herself thatshe wasn’t delusional, was climb to the mountaintop and look. If the tree was really there…
    Ha. How simple! And why not go right now? What was to stop her? Nothing at all. Grinning to herself—how much better she felt already—she was dressed in a few moments, and then heading through the door.
    Outside, it was a warm, hazy morning. A low clatter came from the kitchen, but otherwise the hospital was still asleep. She could be halfway up the mountain before breakfast! Yet she hesitated for an instant, because…well, she didn’t quite know why. She wasn’t breaking any rule. She wasn’t forbidden to leave the grounds. She was an adult, responsible for herself. It was just that she’d never gone anywhere on her own before. But then, she’d never had anywhere to go on her own before.
    Well, now she did. And it was important. Excited again, the orphan walked along the rear fence, past the vegetable garden, until she came to a large hole in the wire. Ducking through it, she tramped across a strip of wasteland, and then she was in the jungle. There was a path there that climbed through the undergrowth. She took it, and after a short ascent she emerged at a grassy height that overlooked the hospital.
    This far the orphan had been before, on picnic outings with the patients and the staff. It was a pleasant spot, with a wide view extending over the jungle to the town, and beyond to the plantations. But today she wasn’t interested in the view. She was interested in the path. From here, it began to climb the mountain proper, leaving the jungle and following a long ridge that thrust down from the volcano’s peak.
    That way she had never been. She stared up. It looked an unfriendly route, rocky and bare, and scabrous with ash that had been partially washed away by rain. The slope was steeper thanshe remembered, too. So steep that the summit itself was hidden. But the path was still discernible. Indeed, someone had walked on it recently—there were tracks trodden into the ash, climbing away out of sight.
    Reassured, the orphan started up, her solid legs pumping steadily, her head bent forward to watch her feet. And at first she felt that she was making good progress, rising swiftly along the path. But gradually the incline steepened, and the last greenery thinned away to ash and rock and brown tufts of grass. The sun lifted above the haze and grew hot. The orphan began to sweat and puff. She hadn’t thought to bring any water, and there was no breeze. She remembered how, in her flight with the foreigner, it had been so deliciously cool when they were drifting above the island. Maybe it would be the same when she reached the summit.
    She paused to gaze up. There was no